Disaster recovery (DR) is a process by which critical aspects of an entity's information technology (IT) environment is replicated at a remote site. In the event of a failure, a failover procedure takes place that switches IT operations to the remote site to provide operational continuity. Depending on the nature of the operations being performed by the entity, different levels of disaster recovery may be appropriate. For example, critical operations may need to be up and running very quickly, while less critical functions can wait.
Two key metrics for measuring recovery plan requirements include recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). RPO is the maximum period in which data might be lost due to an interruption, while RTO is the time and service level within which a business process must be restored. A cost benefit analysis is typically used to determine the aggressiveness of a recovery plan. For example, a business may seek an RPO of 30 minutes and an RTO of 72 hours.
Various network or cloud based DR services are currently available to meet the particular DR requirements of a given entity. However, current DR services are essentially static in nature. In other words, once a DR vendor and plan are selected, there is little or no flexibility to easily change vendors or modify the plan without a significant investment of time and resources. Accordingly, there is no simple mechanism for customers to manage DR costs, easily change RPO/RTO targets, or switch vendors.